After one of the rockiest campaign rollouts of the year and reports that he owed almost $1 million in back taxes, Eric Kearney, the Democratic state senator in Ohio running for lieutenant governor on the ticket to take on Gov. John Kasich, officially backed out of the race Tuesday.

The debacle is a considerable blow to Ed FitzGerald, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, who already has an uphill battle to beat the incumbent Republican.

“I have discussed this with Ed FitzGerald, and while I will always be grateful for him selecting me to be his running mate, we agree that the best course of action is for me to step aside from the campaign for lieutenant governor and focus on serving the people of the Ninth Senate District,” Kearney said, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

At this point, it’s unclear who FitzGerald will pick to replace Kearney. In a statement, the gubernatorial candidate said Kearney stepped down because “the discussion of the crucial issues facing Ohio was in danger of being drowned out, making this decision difficult but necessary.”

Kasich ranks high on national Democrats’ list of top gubernatorial targets for 2014, but polling in the race suggests he has the advantage: A November Quinnipiac survey found Kasich leading FitzGerald by 7 points.

FitzGerald announced Kearney as his running mate last month. At first, Kearney seemed like a good choice: he’s an African-American state legislator with roots in Cincinnati who could have helped FitzGerald turn out the supporters he’d need to defeat Kasich.

But shortly after Kearney joined the ticket, multiple local news outlets reported that he owed up to $825,000 in federal payroll taxes and state unemployment taxes. He also had a $14,000 credit card debt to American Express.

As the reports piled up, the campaign scheduled a conference call for reporters with Kearney. But despite Kearney’s promise to release an “unprecedented amount” of financial data, he spent the call going over spreadsheets that were not circulated to the press until part of the way through.

The damage done to FitzGerald is made even worse by the fact that he initially touted his decision to choose Kearney as indicative of the kinds of decisions he’d make if elected governor.

“Historians and pundits always say that the first real decision a governor makes is the one of running mate,” he wrote in a Nov. 20 email to supporters upon announcing Kearney as his running mate.

Danny Kanner, spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, said Kearney’s departure from the ticket was a “tough but necessary decision.” He maintained that Democrats can win the race if it focuses on Kasich’s record, adding that the Kearney debacle “has clouded that debate.”